Roger Trinquier

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Roger Trinquier (March 20, 1908, La Baume, Hautes-Alpes - 2000, Forcalquier) was a French army officer with an immense impact on the development of counterinsurgency theory.

Trinquier was posted to China in the 1930s where he learned Chinese. Trinquier served in the French Shanghai concession between 1940 and 1946. When the Japanese occupied China during World War II the Vichy French forces were left armed and unmolested until March of 1945 and then imprisoned. Unlike many Vichy officers, Trinquier was kept in service after the war due to the attention of General Raoul Salan. Trinquier was posted alternately to Indochina and to the Commando Training Center. In 1951 he became commander of all anti-communist guerrillas in north Indochina and his teams were very successful until the Battle of Dien Bien Phu caused the withdrawal of the French army from Indochina.

He was posted in 1957 to Algiers during the Algerian War of Independence. In Algiers he was at the origin of the Dispositif de Protection Urbain. Trinquier retired in 1961 and went to the Congo to support the Katanga rebellion of Moïse Tschombé.

Trinquier is a major theorist in the style of warfare he called Modern Warfare, an "interlocking system of actions - political, economic, psychological, military - that aims at the overthrow of the established authority in a country and its replacement by another regime." (Modern Warfare, Ch. 2). He was critical of the traditional army's ability to adapt to this new warfare. The set of measures included the use of small and mobile commando teams, torture, the setting-up of self-defense forces recruited in the local population, and their forced relocation in camps, and psychological and educational operations.

Perhaps his most original contribution was his study and application of terrorism and torture as it related to this Modern Warfare. He argued that it was immoral to treat terrorists as criminals, and to hold them criminally liable for their acts. In his view terrorists should be treated as soldiers, albeit with the qualification that while they may attack civilian targets and wear no uniform, they also must be tortured for the very specific purpose of betraying their organization. Trinquier's criteria for torture was that the terrorist was to be asked only questions that related to the organization of his movement, that the interrogators must know what to ask, and that once the information is obtained the torture must stop and the terrorist is then treated as any other prisoner of war. (See Chapter 4 of Modern Warfare).

In the short run the brutality of the French Modern Warfare resulted in crushing the insurrection in Algeria but, at the same time, made political support at home and abroad strongly drop which led to the ultimate victory of the Algerians in 1963.

In the 1960s, Trinquier's book on modern warfare rapidly became a bible of anti-guerilla warfare and internal repression, first in South America. He became well known for his designation of political adversaries as 'internal enemies' in a Total War.

The US Army showed a strong interest in his experiences and theories when preparing the counterinsurgency warfare by the US [[United States Army Special Forces}Green Berets]] in South Vietnam in the early 1960s and again in today's Iraq.

[edit] Bibliography

Writings of Trinquier:

Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961)

Available online at the US Command and General Staff College

Roger Trinquier, La Guerre moderne, Paris: La Table ronde, 1961.
Roger Trinquier, Le coup d’état du 13 mai. Esprit Nouveau, 1962. Trinquier denounces the foundation of the French Fifth Republic as a coup d'etat.
Roger Trinquier, Jacques Duchemin, and Jacques Le Bailley, Notre guerre au Katanga. Paris: La Pensée Moderne, 1963. Trinquier relates his implication in Katanga.
Roger Trinquier, L’Etat Nouveau. Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1964.
Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency, trans. Daniel Lee (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964).
Roger Trinquier, La Bataille pour l’élection du président de la république. L’Indépendant, 1965
Roger Trinquier, Guerre, subversion, révolution. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1968.
Roger Trinquier, Les Maquis d’Indochine. Les missions spéciales du service action. Paris: Albatros, 1976.
Roger Trinquier, Le premier bataillon des Bérets rouges: Indochine 1947-1949. Paris: Plon, 1984.

Roger Trinquier, La Guerre. Paris: Albin Michel.

About Trinquier:

Maurice Lemoine, De la guerre coloniale au terrorisme d’Etat. Le Monde diplomatique novembre 2004, p.32 http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2004/11/LEMOINE/11679